Searching for the Swamp Land conveyance of Section 22
General Land Office (GLO) tract books show that Section 22 of Township 33 South, Range 28 East—the original townsite of Avon Park—was selected by the State of Florida in 1879 under the Swamp Land Act of 1850. Because of this, no federal land patent exists for the townsite. The next link in the chain of title should be the conveyance from the state’s Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund (TIIF) to a private developer, generally Hamilton Disston’s Florida Land and Improvement Company.
A targeted web search for the specific TIIF conveyance, swamp land patent, or deed covering Section 22, T33S R28E returned no digitized document. However, the search clarified exactly where these records are maintained.
The Bureau of Public Land Administration (BPLA), a division within the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), acts as the administrative staff for the TIIF. They manage the Board of Trustees Land Document System (BTLDS), a document management system and spatial index for state-owned lands, alongside the Land Boundary Information System (LABINS).[fdep-btlds]
Why it matters for research. The failure to find the deed in general search engines is not evidence of its absence, but an indication of the limits of web archival indexing. Retrieving the specific Swamp Land deed that transferred Section 22 out of state ownership requires directly querying the FDEP’s BTLDS database—which may require institutional access or a direct records request—or physical research in the Highlands County Clerk of Courts deed books (which carry transcriptions from the original DeSoto and Manatee county records).
References
- fdep-btlds — State of Florida. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Public Land Administration, Board of Trustees Land Document System (BTLDS). 18 September 2026. https://floridadep.gov/lands
Related
- Finding: Section 22 left federal ownership as swamp land in 1879
- Finding: State Archives records of the Internal Improvement Fund and Disston Purchase
Where this comes from
- Evidence
- corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
- Review
- unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
- Rights
- society
Sources
- State of Florida, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Public Land Administration, Board of Trustees Land Document System (BTLDS) (2026) · official
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